BUSINESS WEST – CONNECTING BUSINESSES
Jordan Daykin of GripIt with Dragon’s Den star Deborah Meaden
inspire
33 countries in a year! GripIt Fixing’s Top Tips for Export Success
I
t’s only one year since Jordan Daykin held his first meeting with UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) to explore export opportunities for Melksham based GripIt Fixings. In just 12 months the business has secured distribution in 33 countries worldwide and seen turnover grow exponentially from £450,000 to £2.5 million. Jordan has been a huge inspiration to entrepreneurs since his first appearance on Dragon’s Den in 2014. After getting help from an international trade adviser for UKTI South West, Jordan has developed six top tips to help other local business owners get to grips with it.
1. Research your markets Don’t dive straight into selling! Spend time on researching the markets you are interested in building your business in. You might have a great product or services and it might be selling well in the UK market but what are the differences in the new markets you are looking at? As well as cultural and language barriers to
work through you may also be faced with different competitors, different laws, different routes to market, different patterns of buying behaviour.
2. Use resources available to you Once we’d done our desk research and leveraged all our own contacts for information, we worked with UKTI to get us ready to export. To deepen our knowledge of the US market, we worked with them to undertake independent research in order to provide conclusions and
recommendations to inform the approach to market entry.
3. What’s your strategy? Once you feel well informed and you have chosen the markets to focus on that present the best opportunity, it’s time to develop a strategy but be prepared to have a different approach to export tailored to the business opportunity in each market. It’s unlikely that ‘one size will fit all’. There are lots of options and your research should tell you what the best route is for you.
4. Know your stuff It can be fairly daunting, especially as a young entrepreneur, to be hosting meetings with new contacts in foreign lands. You want to be taken seriously. What you lack in experience of that market you need to make up for in preparation and by showing you know every nook and cranny of your business, all your numbers and your vision for the future. Sure, you might not know how to build the
whether it’s your investors or your consumers, they are associating your brand with you and investing based on that impression. So don’t hide behind a corporate façade.
Instead, be open and share your story – how did you start your business? What was your inspiration? Why should people put their faith in you? The more passion and dedication you as an individual show, the more people will believe in your product or service.
‘Careful planning is far
more likely to put you in a good position for overcoming obstacles in your way’
6. Think ahead GripIt has gone from a garden shed to being distributed to 33 countries worldwide, so I’m a firm believer that anything is possible if you put your mind to it! It’s impossible to plan for
every eventuality or problem that might arise in business, but careful planning is far more likely to put you in a good position for overcoming obstacles in
best export strategy by yourself, but if you want to instil confidence in your potential business contacts then you need to show you have the capability and the capacity to do it.
5. Be a storyteller People buy into people. As the face of your enterprise, it’s important to remember that
your way or turning threats into opportunities rather than just winging it. Take the same approach to exporting! So what if you’ve had one good meeting with
a potential distributor? Meet more distributors, meet more contacts, make more connections and never stop doing that. Be prepared to accept that what is right for your business today, may not be tomorrow, and that if there is one constant in life then it’s change.
JULY/AUGUST 2016 insight 17
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